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Find Hosting for Your Forum

By William MacMahon


Choosing the right web host for your forum can be quite a frustrating experience. If you go by the advertisements, most hosts would appear to be good for your particular needs. But there have been cases where web host have started out by providing great service, only to get mired later - overselling the shared servers, providing low service quality, not responding to problems promptly, etc. Such experiences lead to a renewed search for a new host yet again.

A solution to this is to get the best quality information and understand what web hosting is all about. The following information will hopefully provide you with the knowledge that will make having a forum quite simple.

The Basics of Web Hosting

An online presence has never been more important and this makes having the right web host vital as a poor choice can ruin some sites. There are many reasons that will impact on your choice such as selling items on your site, having an individual site or passing data efficiently amongst work colleagues around the globe. Making the right choice is very important and price and value can't be your only choices, you need to evaluate quality and links and connections too.

Hopefully, you now know some basics but and you can follow techniques and tips to help you find the perfect host for you.

Here you'll find a list of Web Hosting Companies that can help you with your forum hosting. The following companies run forums on their servers and have been known to do so economically and efficiently.

Leading Web Hosting Companies that support Forums (Arranged alphabetically)

1. Bluehost - www.bluehost.com

2. Hostgator - www.hostgator.com

3. Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com

4. Hostpapa - www.hostpapa.com

5. ixwebhosting - www.ixwebhosting.com

6. Hostmonster - www.hostmonster.com

7. Hostgator - www.hostgator.com

8. Webhostingpad - www.webhostingpad.com

Although this is a filtered list of top sites, there may still be questions you need answers to make the best decision. These would be based around your own needs for things like storage room or the amount of bandwidth you require.

If you want to host a forum, you will need round about 50 GB bandwidth per month and on average, 10 GB of space to store items. These figures are a general example and the needs of your website may differ. If the website you run does not have many images, you may not need a lot of space. However, if your site had a large number of graphics, the opposite would be the case. The host you choose should be able to provide you with information about what you require.

Stability is the key

Moving your websites from one web host to another can be a nightmarish experience; often leading to downtime, loss of data and a number of other problems which may prove to be detrimental to your business. So stability is a very big criterion when you are choosing your web hosting provider. So try to find a well established web hosting provider. Make sure you do a background check and talk to the existing clients to see whether they are satisfied with the service provided. If you have any doubt, don't take a risk. The hassle is not worth the little effort you may save on the research.

Cost

The price you pay is always important to people. This will come to a number of issues including bandwidth issues and storage space. There are three main types of hosting options.

Virtual Private Server

Hosting that is dedicated

Virtual Private Server

You need to make your choice based on your budget and the size of your forum.

Here is some more information about these options.

Shared Hosting - In this option, the server is owned by the web host and is rented out in parts to a number of people. This is the most economical option if budget is your primary concern. But your performance may suffer since the various sites on the server keep competing for the server's resources on a continuous basis. This may result in your site running slow and you may also suffer outages.

Hosting that is dedicated Hosting - This is the higher end of the market coming with better performance. No other firm is fighting for your server space so that element is better but this requires a level of skill and expertise. Failing that, it possible to contract an external agent to running this service for you and you can buy a server or rent it.

Dedicated Hosting - This is the high end option providing top quality at a high price. There is no other site competing with you on the server which is great but you may need to know a lot about how to run a server. It is possible to pay a firm to manage your server and you can either buy the server or rent it.

Service

When looking for the best provider to host your forum you need to be aware of quality service and high level technical assistance. This should be provided by the best host providers. It can be simple to select a host to that is popular because if other users recommend the site, it must have some qualities. However, a popular site is a busy site and this may place extra strain on its resources. A lot of clients can be a bad thing when examining which host to work with.

Always examine the technical assistance provided by the web host. Perhaps you can speak to other clients to get information. The following tips may be of use:

Can they offer quick solutions?

Can they offer quality solutions?

Are the technicians always on call?

What is the support policy on holidays and after work hours?

Do they respond quickly be email?

Do they make service a priority or are they prone to evasions and excuses?

The answers to these questions will give you a good idea about which provider to opt for.

The final word

It can be very difficult to find a good host but the information provided should help you. Many people say that the relationship between a website and a host provider is a lot like a marriage. Just like real life, separating can be a difficult and costly affair. To be sure you get the best deal undertake a lot of research before you make the final decision.




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